2003-12-12

Hear ye, hear ye: I have a BIG FUCKING ANNOUNCEMENT to make, y�all. I�ve just heard back about my work visa application and holy shit, I AM MOVING TO FUCKING ENGLAND. In June, for two years. I have five and a half months to get rid of everything I own that won�t fit in two suitcases and find a place to live in Britain.

I�ll be moving to Manchester � my first choice was London, of course, but two hundred and fifty pounds can buy a month�s rent in Manchester, whereas in London it can just about cover a haircut and a packet of crisps. (Hee � �crisps.� See, I�m already practicing my lingo! �Flush the coke down the bog.� �Put the body in the boot.� Yep, I�m just about ready to be in a Guy Ritchie film.)

This means that any of you, my dear readers, who happen to live in the UK are now my instant best friends. Doesn�t this make you happy? I know that finding random foreigners on my couch always perks up my day.

Until June, however, I must continue to toil away here in Ottawa, where things are decidedly surreal today. I�m at work with no boss. Until the new Cabinet gets sworn in, I have no idea to whom I�ll be reporting: I�m watching the news in my office waiting for some hint about my new employers. What�s even weirder is that it has been more or less officially announced that the department will be split in two, effective immediately � I don�t know which half I�ll end up working for. I could even be out of a job, for all I know. Seriously: I�ve worked for alcoholics, cokeheads, philanderers, and even Greeks, and this is the strangest employment situation I�ve ever found myself in.

There�s nothing for me to do, I guess, but hang attentively on Peter Mansbridge�s every droning word and wait for my immediate future to come into focus. More as it happens.